I have a dream

My dream is to be able to make a living from writing fiction. I want to tell stories that linger for weeks after the last page is turned. It will be mind-boggling sci-fiction, epic historical novels, fast paced fantasy and chilling crime novels. I want to explore the depths of my imagination and create stories that pull my readers into the unique universes that I create. I guess, I am no different from most other authors in that respect.

I admire all the aspiring authors of the world. Most use hundreds of hours writing books without having the faintest idea if anyone but their grandmother and maybe an aunt will buy and read them. However they still pursue a dream when in many cases they could have chosen a safer path in life with a 9 to 5 job and a fixed salary. So could I. I actually have a great job. As a science journalist, I get to write about human evolution, climate change, genetics, history and archaeology on a daily basis. I have written more than a thousand articles on these subjects and I am very successful. Still, I want to try something new. I only have one life (most people do), and I do not want to sit in some retirement home many years from now regretting that I had a dream of writing books, but chose the safer path, because it was the financially sound thing to do.

I often cite something a nurse at a retirement home in Australia wrote in some book a few years back. She had cared for dying people for more than 25 years, and in the end she made a list of the things people regret the most before they die. The thing most people regret is:

‘I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, and not the life others expected of me.’

Now, I hope I can inspire people by pursuing my dream. Mainly, I want to inspire my children by showing them that dreams are meant to be fulfilled. If they are not, then they are only fantasies. My dream right now is to write books and be able to make a living of it. Will I succeed? I do not know, but in the end I want to be able to tell the nurse at some retirement home 60 years from now that I do not regret the life I lived, and that I truly tried to live out all of my dreams.